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Who Should Be Charged with Criminal Conduct?

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Volume 109 Issue 4 Dickinson Law Review - Volume 109, 2004-2005 3-1-2005 Jose Padilla and Martha Stewart: Who Should be Charged with Criminal Conduct? Ellen S. Podgor Follow this and additional works at: https://ideas.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlra Recommended Citation Ellen S. Podgor, Jose Padilla and Martha Stewart: Who Should be Charged with Criminal Conduct?, 109 DICK. L. REV. 1059 (2005). Available at: https://ideas.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlra/vol109/iss4/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews at Dickinson Law IDEAS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dickinson Law Review by an authorized editor of Dickinson Law IDEAS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Jose Padilla and Martha Stewart: Who Should Be Charged with Criminal Conduct? Ellen S. Podgor* I. Introduction Prosecutorial discretion plays an important role in deciding who will be charged with criminal conduct, and what, if any charges will be pursued.1 As a result of numerous factors, prosecutorial power has expanded in recent years. For one, there is an increased number of federal criminal statutes.2 Further, broad interpretations of these statutes play a key role in offering new options for prosecutors as they exercise their discretion.3 Prosecutors also have the liberty to charge "cover-up" crimes, 4 such as making false statements or obstructing justice, as opposed to proceeding against the underlying conduct. Additionally, prosecutors have significant leeway in pursuing extraterritorial conduct and they may now proceed against conduct that at one time may have * Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law. The author thanks Cleveland-Marshall College of Law where an earlier draft of this paper served as the basis for a speech given as part of its Criminal Justice Forum. Thanks also go to participants in the Criminal Justice Forum for their comments on a draft of this paper and to Russ Weaver for organizing this conference. Finally, thanks go to research assistant Shannon Vamer Alexander. 1. See Richard Bloom, Prosecutorial Discretion, 87 GEO L.J. 1267 (1999); Ellen S. Podgor, Department of Justice Guidelines: Balancing "Discretionary Justice," 13 CORNELL J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 167 (2004); Ellen S. Podgor, The Ethics and Professionalism of Prosecutorsin DiscretionaryDecisions, 68 FORDHAM L. REv. 1511 (2000). 2. See infra notes 9-13 and accompanying text. 3. See infra notes 15-33 and accompanying text. 4. See generally Kathleen F. Brickey, From Enron to WorldCom and Beyond: Life and Crime After Sarbanes-Oxley, 81 WASH. U. L.Q. 357 (2003) (explaining how the Sarbanes-Oxley Act provided prosecutors with new mechanisms for prosecuting fraud); Kathleen F. Brickey, Andersen's Fall from Grace, 81 WASH. U. L.Q. 917 (2003) (explaining how a recently enacted witness tampering statute allowed the government to charge Andersen with obstruction of justice despite the fact that no legal proceedings were pending at the time that documents were destroyed); Stuart P. Green, Uncovering the Cover-up Crime, 42 AM. CRIM. L. REv. (forthcoming 2005); Geraldine Szott Moohr, An Enron Lesson: The Modest Role of Criminal Law in Preventing Corporate Crime, 55 FLA. L. REv. 937 (2003). 1060 PENN STATE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 109:4 been left to civil actions. Finally, the administration's decision to proceed outside the criminal justice process through use of the "enemy combatant" status has offered prosecutor's an additional option.5 In examining new dimensions to prosecutorial discretion, this paper looks at the exercise of discretion in two instances: (1) the designation of Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant; 6 and (2) the charging of Martha Stewart with criminal conduct. 7 It asks whether it was proper to proceed outside the judicial process with Jose Padilla and whether Martha Stewart should have been charged with a crime.8 II. Expanded Prosecutorial Discretion A. IncreasedFederal Legislation On May 11, 1998, in an address to the 75th Annual American Law Institute Meeting, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist described the burden on the federal system of justice caused by over-federalization. 9 He repeated earlier criticisms of "Congress and the President for their propensity to enact more and more legislation, which brings more and more cases into the federal court system."' The impact of federalization on the criminal justice process received heightened consideration when the American Bar Association appointed a task force to examine this issue in 1998. The ABA Report on the "Federalization of Criminal Law," a report from a committee chaired by Edwin Meese, III and William W. Taylor, Ii, stressed the "dramatic increase in the number and variety of federal crimes."11 A startling statistic from this Report was that "of all federal crimes enacted since 1865, over forty percent [were] created since 1970."' 12 The Report told of how new crimes are added to the role of federal criminality "not because federal prosecution of these crimes is necessary but because' 3 federal crime legislation in general is thought to be politically popular." 5. See infra notes 56-74 and accompanying text. 6. See infra notes 75-81 and accompanying text. 7. See infra notes 68-74 and accompanying text. 8. See infra Section IV. 9. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Remarks at the 75th Annual American Law Institute Meeting (May 11, 1998) (on file with author), also excerpted in Chief Justice Raises Concerns on Federalization,30 THE THIRD BRANCH (Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Washington D.C.), June, 1998, at 1, available at http://www.uscourts.gov/ttb/jun98ttb/index.html (last visited Feb. 18, 2005). 10. Id. 11. James A. Strazzella, The Federalization of Criminal Law, 1998 A.B.A. CRIM. JUST. SEC. 2. 12. .Id. 13. Id. See also generally James Strazzella, The Federal Role in Criminal Law, 543 2005] JOSE PADILLA AND MARTHA STEWART The dismay with increased federalization is not unique to one political party. It is a problem seen by groups espousing a wide array of political and ideological views. For example, the Heritage Foundation has a special group that regularly meets to discuss overcriminalization concerns.14 Likewise, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) notes overfederalization as one of its missions, "urg[ing] Congress to reject its tendency to federalize crime and repeal legislation that is contrary to our system of federalism and sound crime control policy. ,1 5 In a 1998 article, then NACDL President Gerald B. Lefcourt, National District Attorneys Association President William L. Murphy, and ABA Criminal Justice Section Chair Ronald Goldstock stated that, [c]riminal and social problems are increasingly being addressed by the Congress with what many have come to regard as a purely political response-calls to federalize more criminal activity and to lengthen already unwieldy prison terms.... There can be little doubt that increased federal prosecutive authority has adversely affected the Department of Justice's ability to fulfill its role of enforcing traditional federal offenses ....16 B. OverbroadFederal Statutes The increase in new legislation, permitting increased federal prosecution, is not the only cause of overfederalization and overcriminalization. There is also legislation that lacks sufficient specificity, allowing prosecutors to use federal statutes to bring conduct that is normally handled by state and local bodies into the federal system. 17 Generic statutes allow federal prosecutors discretion to proceed ANNALS AM. ACAD. POL. & SOC. SC,. 9 (1996) (providing a broad overview of the influence that federal legislation and federal courts have on criminal law and introducing articles on the topic by other commentators). 14. See Paul Rosenzweig, The Over-Criminalization of Social and Economic Conduct, HERITAGE FOUND. POL'Y RES. & ANALYSIS (April 17, 2003), at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Legallssues/lm7.cfm (last visited Feb. 15, 2005); see also http://www.overcriminalized.com/ (last visited Feb. 15, 2005). 15. National Association of Criminal Defense, Legislation: Overfederalization, at http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/legislation/overcriminalization (last visited Feb. 15, 2005). 16. Ronald Goldstock, Gerald Lefcourt & William Murphy, Justice That Makes Sense, 21 CHAMPION 6, 7-8 (1997). 17. In some cases these statutes are subject to challenges for being vague. See generally Anthony G. Amsterdam, Note, The Void-for- Vagueness Doctrine in the Supreme Court, 109 U. PA. L. REv. 67 (1960); Robert Batey, Vagueness and the Construction of CriminalStatutes-Balancing Acts, 5 VA. J. SOC. POL'Y & L. 1 (1997). 1062 PENN STATE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 109:4 criminally against conduct that might normally be considered state or local criminal activity. For example, the mail fraud statute, 18 an 1872 federal statute that was focused on re-codifying the Postal Act and criminalizing lottery schemes that used the postal system, allows for federal prosecution of a wide array of conduct. 19 Jed Rakoff, now a federal district court judge, has called the mail fraud statute the prosecutor's "Stradivarius" or "Colt 45. "20 Schemes to defraud, whether they involve diet drug fraud,2' "divorce mill" fraud,2 2 or securities fraud,23 may lead to charges of mail fraud when there is some mailing, no matter how "routine" or "innocent" the mailing might be.24 The Supreme Court has stated that the mailing does not have to be an essential part of the scheme to defraud.25 Equally permissive is the wire fraud statute, a law that was modeled after the mail fraud statute, although enacted in 1952.26 Even when the wire used as the basis for the prosecution passes from one place within a state to another place within the same state, wire fraud may be charged if the wire happened to have passed, unbeknownst to the sender, outside the state. Prosecutors also have enormous discretion to bring criminal charges for conspiracy to defraud, which Justice Learned Hand referred to as the "darling of the modern prosecutor's nursery.
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